Love Conquers All by Robert Benchley
Sixty-three essays on a variety of topics as wide apart as Family Life in America, Opera Synopses, Bigamy, International Finance and many more, Love Conquers All by Robert Benchley strangely enough does not touch upon romance at all! However, these delightful notes provide hours of browsing pleasure for young and old readers alike. Robert Benchley was a well-known humorist and newspaper columnist, radio and television presenter, actor, scriptwriter and broadcaster. He is also credited with creating the first ever television entertainment show and one of his iconic short films, How to Sleep won an Academy Award in 1936. Love Conquers All is a collection of short pieces which were published in various newspapers and journals like the The New York Tribune, Life, The New York World and several other consolidated press agencies. Benchley’s tongue-in-cheek humor and his zany commentary on the world around him have continued to delight readers since they were first compiled in book form in 1922. The quirky illustrations by the famous cartoonist Gluyas Williams add to the book’s appeal. Some of the essays in the volume include titles such as Rules and Suggestions for Watching Auction Bridge, Do Insects Think? What to Do While the Family is Away, When not in Rome, Why do as the Romans Did? Welcome Home – And Shut Up! Advice to Writers and a host of other topics. Between 1919-29, Benchley and other greats of American humor formed the famous Algonquin Round Table Club. The members included Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, George Kaufmann, Harpo Marx and many others whose wacky takes on life continue to delight readers even today. The Algonquin Club which met regularly at the historic Algonquin Hotel in New York. The members whose numbers expanded to include literary greats like Edna Ferber and Heywood Broun. The meetings resulted in the founding of the New Yorker magazine and even today, all guests at the hotel receive free copies of the magazine. The members who referred to themselves as the Vicious Circle had a great influence over literature and journalism of the era. Fitzgerald and Hemingway were also greatly influenced by the ideas of the Vicious Circle. Today the Round Table restaurant at the Algonquin is a mecca for literature buffs. Benchley’s style is upper-class, genteel, literary and is characterized by extensive puns and word play. However, some of his pieces are distinctly of the “cracker-barrel” variety of fun, relying on exaggerations, slapstick and dialects. He had a big influence on humorists ranging from James Thurber to Dave Barry. He wrote more than 600 essays and short pieces which were compiled into more than a dozen volumes, which continue to be published by major publishers. His short films are becoming more and more popular today. An amusing addition to your humor collection!
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